


Crow

by Zeborah



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Trapped In Elevator, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11828400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeborah/pseuds/Zeborah
Summary: Hotch gets an unexpected call in a stuck elevator.





	Crow

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Raven](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4528746) by [Silverwrym](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverwrym/pseuds/Silverwrym). 



> 1) This is an (unauthorised) alternate ending following from chapter 1 of Silverwrym's "The Raven" so you should really read that chapter first. The other chapters of the original seem like a far healthier response but... well, this was just too much fun to write.
> 
> 2) I calculated speeds of impact to several decimal places but never bothered to check whether elevators and their braking mechanisms actually work like any of this. So, um. Don't try this at home. For so many reasons....

Hotch stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. His eyes were sore and his shoulders ached and it was only half past six, which was still late enough to be late for dinner. Again. He should have picked Jack up from Jessica's an hour ago and left the paperwork for after Jack went to bed. Except Jack was having nightmares (again, or maybe just still) and so clingy it was impossible to take so much as a bathroom break. It hurt to see him like that, and to think of Haley gone who should be the one comforting him. It made him wish Foyet was alive again so he could—

Safer, better, easier to stay in his office a few more minutes. And a few more. Until he was so tired—

The elevator wasn't moving. He pressed the button again; tried the 'door open' button; and with gritted teeth hit the alarm.

"Hello, Hotch," Reid said.

He narrowed his eyes at the speaker grill. Reid _had_ gone home an hour ago — he'd thought. "What are you doing there?"

"In my apartment or on this line?" Reid asked. "It's actually quite a long story, but, uh, I think we've got time."

Hotch put two and two together and didn't want to believe the answer. "Can you please just get someone to fix this elevator."

"I could," Reid confirmed it. "But I've been thinking about that time you visited my apartment. I'm sure you remember that night."

Hotch stilled. He'd been horrendously drunk, but he remembered that night as clear as the next morning's hangover. And he remembered on Monday waiting for Reid to lay a complaint, but Reid had just gone about the week: leaning more heavily on his cane, certainly, but otherwise pretending nothing had ever happened. Hotch had figured it for a defence mechanism and let him have it, but apparently it'd been cover instead for some byzantine revenge scheme.

Which Hotch wasn't going to play along with. They could deal with what he'd done on Monday, in his office like adults, but right now he was getting out of here — and the way to fight revenge was to undermine the motive. Gaslighting wouldn't work on Reid, but denial was still a start: "I've never been to your apartment."

"I thought you might say that," Reid said, "especially since you know I might be recording this. The point is, I've been thinking about it a lot, and especially how you accused me of getting injured to get attention. Obviously the whiskey affected your profiling but even so it seemed strange for that to get you so upset."

"Reid, I really—" faint pause — "don't know what you're talking about."

"After all, why would you mind me getting attention when everyone knows you're practically allergic to it? If anything you should appreciate the distraction. —Your phone won't work, by the way."

Hotch paused again, cellphone barely out of his pocket. Reid could see as well as hear him. He looked up at the security camera for a long, measuring moment, then back at his phone. Sure enough it showed no network.

Reid continued, "But then I realised it actually made sense."

And his phone call to Security went nowhere. "Reid, none of what you're saying—" He lifted his hand to his forehead, phone and all, like someone trying to remember, or trying not to. "This never happened."

"Hotch, do you want to know how I know for a fact that you didn't black out the entire night?"

Fuck. Because if he really hadn't remembered then he'd have concluded that Reid had had a psychotic break, and then he'd be going about this entirely differently.

Reid apparently saw the revelation over the security feed, because he didn't bother spelling it out. He just resumed: "It makes sense if I take into account the ways you've reacted to various UnSubs we've dealt with over the years. You hate the abusive fathers."

"Everyone does," he interrupted the budding lecture.

"But not like you do, and everyone else hates the abusive mothers too, whereas your real venom is reserved for the mothers who don't protect their children."

He resisted the urge to bristle and channelled it instead into a disappointed, "I thought you were a better profiler than this, Reid."

"And I thought you were a better actor," Reid returned. "But you weren't really lying to Philip Dowd when you told him how much I annoyed you, were you? You're not capable of manufacturing emotion like that, only concealing or revealing it. Your old drama teacher said the same—"

In disbelief Hotch said, "You talked to my—"

"When you played the Fourth Pirate you either stood there like a plank of wood or displayed far more anger than was really appropriate for a bit player in a high school comedy. So assuming that all your reactions in the field have been genuine—"

Hotch gritted his teeth and returned to his phone, but his texts disappeared into the void.

"—The obvious hypothesis is that you grew up with a father who abused you and a mother who let him, and the skills you learned to survive that experience have shaped how you interact with the world today. For instance—"

He couldn't even bring up his email.

"—Ordinarily you present yourself as the fearless pillar of the community your father wanted you to be. When you're injured you refuse to show your aggressor that it's had any effect on you — just like you're doing now," he added as Hotch levelled his eyes back up at the security camera. "I speculated that was how you kept Foyet from killing you, but of course that wasn't just a tactic you assumed in the moment: it isn't possible to sustain that level of stoicism in the face of the incredibly severe injuries he inflicted on you without years of practice.

"Even when you're safe afterwards you minimise the pain because your father wouldn't have tolerated you whining about nothing, and he wouldn't risk letting anyone outside the family realise he was beating you. But at the same time, you always wanted someone to notice and stop it, you were especially desperate for your mother's attention, and you still crave that attention from the people around you even as you paradoxically reject it. For example when you flew with a ruptured eardrum and the pain got too much, you could have excused yourself to the bathroom but instead you stayed with the rest of the team so everyone would notice."

He paused there. Hotch waited a moment then asked in his most unimpressed tone, "Is that it? I was expecting a full dissertation."

"I assumed you'd want to rebut my points."

"What points? You've only made a hypothesis, and not a very good one at that."

"Admittedly parts of it are speculative, but I did confirm the substantive aspects of it with your mother." And, as Hotch worked at breathing through that stab of pure fury, he added, "Actually it was when she mentioned your constant criticism of your brother's hair that I realised you weren't just angry at me for getting the attention you long for, I specifically remind you of him and the way your mother always showered him with attention while ignoring your plight."

Very, very steadily, Hotch asked the camera, "What's your endgame here, Reid? Because obviously you realise you're fired, and so far all you've achieved is to make me a few minutes later for dinner with my son than I was already going to be."

"That's because I haven't started yet," Reid pointed out. "And, _obviously_ , I want revenge and I want a detailed apology for what you did."

"You mean a confession."

"Given your apparent lack of remorse and your aforementioned lack of acting ability I might have to settle for that, yes."

Smart-ass. "And why would I do that, when I know you might be recording this?"

"Because when you came to my apartment you were drunk, but I'm sober and Morgan can tell you I'm _very_ good at getting revenge, especially when I've had this long to plan it. But whether or not you believe me, I'm not recording this — and neither are you. Look at your screen."

He considered refusing, but it wouldn't achieve anything. The recording app he'd thumbed open had closed again, replaced by a message: _Little Brick Out still works._ Having nothing better to do with it, he put it away and pointed out, "I'm not the one playing games here."

"Speaking of games, pick a number between seven and twenty-one."

Those were all the floors above him. At this time on a Friday night, the few people remaining on any of them would probably be ensconced far away in their offices, but level eighteen usually had more activity. "No."

"It's not actually a game, I just want to demonstrate that this isn't programmed, I've got real-time control of the elevator."

"Stipulated. And?"

"Pick a number."

"One."

"Hotch," Reid said patiently, "I've got an apartment literally full to the ceiling of books. You've got a bricked phone and a briefcase, and when I borrowed your pen this afternoon I took the ink out before returning it. Do you really want to try and wait me out?"

Without taking his eyes off the camera he counted to two hundred before letting Reid have the satisfaction. "Fine. Eighteen."

There was a short pause, but Reid hadn't actually wandered away to read an encyclopaedia. "That's a bit predictable," he critiqued then, "but it's your choice." And the elevator began to rise, floor by floor.

Hotch waited unmoving until it landed on 18. Then he stepped forward and pounded on the doors with his most penetrating bellow: "Can someone please contact Security to open this?"

When he paused for breath Reid said, "I picked tonight because they're at Portman's birthday party." Sure enough there was no answer and, after he judged Hotch had sufficiently reddened his fingertips at the crack between the doors, the elevator began rising again. Even as Hotch glanced up he said, "Contrary to depictions in popular movies, most modern elevators don't have any access to the shaft for safety reasons."

He knew that, he thought snappishly. But there might be exposed circuitry—

"Also I'm ninety percent sure that trying to short out the power won't have any effect."

"Only ninety percent?" Hotch mocked, assessing the space he had to work with.

The elevator reached 21 and stopped. "Well, I'm not actually an electrical engineer, but given the size of the capacitors needed to let me temporarily override the braking mechanism, if you succeeded the effects would most probably be, um, fatal, so—"

Good, because Hotch was well more than ninety percent certain that Reid was neither a murderer nor actually insane. Besides, you couldn't get revenge or a confession from a corpse. Without another word, he clambered up on the handrail and, precariously braced between that and the ceiling, used his pocket knife to work on one of the screws.

Which was when the handrail dropped out from beneath him, and his stomach with it.

He might have miscalculated Reid's level of sanity, he thought as he curled mid-air. Then the floor slammed into him, followed by the wall as his instinctive roll was cut short. The first blow would have been enough to stun him. The second— _Get up, pantywaist,_ he thought fiercely. Shoving his feet under him, he stood with a black glare at the camera. He was going to feel those bruises later, but at least he'd managed to avoid landing on his briefcase or his pocket knife.

"That was seven feet," Reid said.

The number 21 still shone placidly above the doors: a storey in FBI buildings was a standard fifteen feet. He looked once more at the camera, then turned to clamber back up on the handrail. This time he'd barely got his pocket knife in position when the elevator dropped again, and again he slipped and slammed to the floor — and rolled straight onto his briefcase.

"And that was another seven feet," Reid said as Hotch forced himself to ignore his back and collect his pocket knife on his way to his feet. It had felt like more.

And above the doors the number had gone out. "No, it wasn't." If the elevator had only dropped fourteen feet it would have been shining 20. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"It probably feels like more because there's no room to properly absorb the impact of landing like you normally would, but you were four feet up and the elevator dropped three feet so that makes—"

"Thank you, genius, I _can_ add."

"Can you calculate the speed of impact from a fall of seven feet?"

He was enjoying himself. And Hotch was betraying far too much how rattled the whole situation had got him. He reined himself back to a drier, "Well sure, if you hadn't taken the ink out of my pen."

"It comes to around fourteen point four seven miles per hour," he said, while Hotch kicked his briefcase out of the way and clambered back up. "Which isn't a lot, even repeated a hundred times, but it'd still hurt."

He managed to turn the screw a quarter before the next fall got him, and to land more cleanly. It did still hurt — his knees were going to regret this tomorrow too — but he didn't comment on that. Reid had used the conditional: "I take it you're afraid it'd bore me to death," he said, and again hoisted himself up.

"It's just not really painful enough to suit my plans," Reid said placidly. "But speed of impact from a fall of fifteen feet reaches twenty-one point one eight miles per hour." He paused there to shake Hotch loose a fourth time, and to watch him roll back up. The number 20 shone now, though if he was telling the truth they weren't quite level with that floor yet. "And obviously the _force_ of impact varies a bit more but just for comparison experts generally estimate the likelihood of a fatality for pedestrians hit by an automobile at twenty miles per hour to be five percent. But then you know how to take a fall and you're in good physical condition, so I don't think there's any real risk of permanent damage from that either."

"Good to hear," Hotch said. It did tell him one thing: he needed to get that panel open before Reid had done toying with him and got serious. As he got back to his feet he asked, "So what're the odds for a thirty-foot drop?"

"Impacting at twenty-nine point nine five miles per hour, estimates range between 37 and 45 per cent chance of fatality."

They weren't great odds, especially given the amount of room even survival left for serious injury. But hell, he knew how to take a fall and he was in good physical condition, and Reid was clearly gearing up to it anyway. He got up on the handrail on his second attempt and said, "I'm game if you are."

The pause that followed that gave him some satisfaction. "I'm not playing chicken either."

"Really?" he prodded. "Not even out of scientific curiosity?"

"I didn't say I wasn't going to drop you two floors, it just won't be because you goaded me into it. You're trying to take back what little control you can from the situation and simultaneously reduce the satisfaction I take from my revenge, but it won't work because I know that when faced with a serious threat you're fundamentally incapable of _not_ reacting with bravado. Ultimately what you're doing is equivalent to when I begged and pleaded for you to get out of my apartment."

What he was _doing_ was getting a screw loose. When the lift dropped next he had his fingers to the edge of the panel. He kept his balance — just. It was when it stopped, and as instantly dropped again, that he fell back. Through his mind flashed the thought: he was leaning too far, he couldn't get his feet—

His head struck the door. His shoulder landed wrong, and then his hands—

Everything was a haze. _Keep. Moving._ His wrists shot blinding pain as he tried to push himself up. He tried his forearms, which merely seared agony in his right shoulder. An old familiar ringing had set up in his ear. Blurrily the floor came into focus, and the knee of his pants. More pangs emerged from the initial numbness, warnings he ignored as he dragged himself bull-headedly up to—

Everything spun. He reached for the wall to steady himself and instantly regretted it.

As he thudded back to knees and elbows in silent pain, Reid said smugly, "And that looks like the equivalent of me screaming and crying like a little baby."

Hotch gritted his teeth to try again. This was down, that was up. _This_ was down. _That_ goddamned son of a _bitch_ was—

"The impact's probably disturbed your vestibular system," Reid added helpfully. "The vertigo will most likely be a transitory effect."

Screw standing. One knee to bear his weight, one foot to brace himself, and just _deal_ with the torture that was moving his arm—

"Seriously?" Reid squealed as he drew his gun. "You didn't see _me_ pulling my gun on you."

He nearly fumbled it just flicking the safety off. "Which speaks to the fact that you've never been in any danger from me."

"Or to the fact that I can handle a schoolyard bully without threatening to tell tales," Reid retorted.

"You think a bit of cheap reverse psychology is going to keep me compliant?" Even with both hands clasped agonisingly around the butt, his elbows protested straightening.

"I think you're panicking, because you clearly haven't thought this through at all. Assuming despite your injuries you have mechanically perfect aim so the bullet doesn't ricochet and kill you, the recoil's still going to further damage your arms and the percussive blast in this confined space will re-perforate your eardrum. Either way, Security investigates and you lose control of the situation. I'll be arrested—"

"No kidding," Hotch growled, "and I'll be the one doing it." He _could_ lift his arms, he was just... gearing up to it.

"—And the team will want to know what made me snap, and so will the Bureau, and I'll tell them."

His breath hitched, and he could _not_ let Reid know that had got to him. Deliberately he sneered, "Because you imagine I went to your apartment some night and accused you of attention-seeking? Sure: maybe you'll end up in a psychiatric facility instead of prison."

"I don't think so, because when you threw my phone at me and left, I took photos of the things you threw around my apartment. The pieces of the mug were scattered in a pattern indicating a much larger force of impact than would have happened if it'd merely slipped out of your fingers as you claimed, but some of the pieces are still large enough to hold partial fingerprints. I also have security footage showing you entering and leaving my building, a statement from the staff at the Oak Tavern where you were drinking, and a full medical report comparing my injuries before and after you visited."

"That's not a case, it's innuendo."

"And if it went to trial you could probably get away on reasonable doubt, but it doesn't matter because you'll still have lost the team's trust at best, more likely your job, and politically I don't think the BAU could survive losing two agents like that. And then combined with your mother's statement that the reason she sent you away to boarding school was—"

He snapped, "My mother told you a load of bullshit."

"—Because when you found Sean crying after your father's death you spanked him so hard you left bruises—"

"Bullshit," he repeated. "You really think a spot in a place like that opens up overnight? She'd been trying to get rid of me for years."

"Yes, but before your father died it was to protect you from—"

" _Bullshit_." In one move he surged to his feet. He didn't need his throbbing hands this time, and his balance held. The trembling was fury, not pain, and definitely not fear.

Reid fell silent. Hotch adjusted his grip on the gun and steeled himself again to lift it. He was getting out of here, and he'd deal with everything else later. But then Reid resumed, "The point is that Jack's aunt might be concerned when—"

"You fucking shitstain, I have _never_ hit Jack."

"Maybe, but you're denying hurting me too, so, uh, I really have no way of being sure of that."

Heart pounding and breath rasping as loud as they were, he still heard the trap closing in those words. Reid had been playing him all this time, only of course it wasn't Little Brick Out. It wasn't chicken. It was chess. It was always fucking chess with Reid.

_Think, you imbecile. Are you going to let yourself be beaten by some lanky-haired brat who doesn't know when to shut up?_ If Reid really thought Jack was in danger he'd have done something about it months ago. He certainly wouldn't be winding Hotch up and then sending him on his way. This was about revenge, and it was about a confession.

Subsuming all his rage and desperation into his steadiest, flattest tone, he said, "So let me get this straight. You're threatening to have my job and my son taken away from me, and the only way I can convince you otherwise is to make a confession you can use to put me in prison."

"That's not—"

"Fine," he interrupted stonily, "but here are two more options for you. One: you open these doors right now and, _solely_ for the purpose of not tearing the BAU apart, I'll agree to let this one slide. Or two—" and his left hand dropped gratefully while his right screamed all the way up to his temple: "I end this myself."

"You're bluffing," Reid blurted.

Poker always had been more Hotch's game. He said grimly, "You set the dominoes up, don't be surprised where they fall."

"I'm not surprised, I just don't believe you." But he sounded as desperate as Hotch felt.

"Jack will be better off with Jessica anyway. And you—" His arm was shaking. He let it: he didn't need mechanically perfect aim for this. "Can have your weekly visit to the prison library for the expurgated edition of the Count of Monte Cristo. Complete with dog-ears and mysterious stains." He moved his finger to the trigger. "Or open the doors. Five. Four. Three—"

The doors swished open.

Quickly he moved his finger back and fumbled the safety on before a badly timed twitch could ruin everything. Stooping for his briefcase, he—

Fell.

(Reid cheated at poker.)

He lay stunned again on his side, listening to the inner doors belatedly close, trying to orient himself through the haze of pain. His other shoulder had taken the brunt of the impact this time. He'd felt the briefcase bounce off his ribs. He couldn't see it now; in fact both his hands were empty.

"I'll let you leave," Reid said as he moved his head to look for the gun. "But not before you've listened to what I have to— Hotch, I swear to god if you try to—"

He lunged for it, and the floor dropped again. And then he was rolling on his back trying to escape the ubiquitous pain, and yet — it had been the same short drop. No matter how he squinted, none of the numbers above the doors were lit. Always the same three feet. "You're scared."

"So are you."

He huffed a sour laugh. What was the point of denying it if Reid was just going to construe that as some plea for mercy? "You're not getting your fucking confession."

"If I wanted a fucking confession I wouldn't have set this up as mutually assured destruction, Hotch! Do you really think _anything_ that's happened here isn't something I planned for? You wanted me to listen to you — well, now you have to listen to me and every time you try to move for the next two weeks you'll have to remember it, just like I did — only _I_ eventually realised that your profile was full of crap. I'm not the one to blame for Haley's death any more than I'm the one desperate for attention, and you know it. After all, I might have missed the prescriptions but you missed the fact that your miraculous survivor was the UnSub. How does that not even occur to you _once_ in _ten years_?"

He blenched, and turned his face away from the words. It was about as effective as trying to escape the pain, and twice as transparent.

"In Boston you delayed sharing your profile with the team," Reid continued inexorably. "When Foyet called you at the hotel you provoked him because you _have_ to be the alpha male—" he ignored Hotch's warding hand — "and again you didn't tell us about it until after he'd massacred everyone on that bus. You failed to realise why he let us catch him, or to convince the Marshals to let us help search for him. You never noticed him stalking you and you practically _let_ him wipe the floor with you in your apartment. Did you even throw that glass at him or did it just 'slip out of your fingers'?"

He screwed his eyelids shut, but hot tears still leaked through. Foyet had brushed it aside like a fly, and moments later Hotch had been — just like now — laid out on the ground a pathetic, helpless mess.

"Then you didn't even have the decency to just _die_ and remove his motive for going after Haley and Jack. And maybe worst of all, when they had to go into witness protection, you pulled strings and insisted on your friend taking them on as a special case, so of course Foyet had no problems tracking him down and then contacting her through his phone."

Speaking would have led to so much sobbing. All the exact points — damn Reid, all the exact fucking _words_ — that circled his head in the middle of the night when Jack crawled into his bed again for comfort. Even the pain in his wrist as he wiped ineffectually at his tears proved no distraction.

"You weren't mad at me, you were mad at yourself — but, Hotch, the really, really _stupid_ thing is that the only person to blame for Foyet's acts of violence is Foyet. And you knew that," he said, voice rising in indignation as Hotch reeled from that abrupt about-face, "but you let it consume you anyway and turn you into someone who beats up a defenceless cripple and ignores his pleas for help. So blame yourself for _that_. And when you're limping out of here, blame yourself for how transparent it is that all your pride and bravado — the fact that you'd rather threaten suicide than stand up and apologise for what you did — is really just shame and cowardice."

That shame broke the last thin thread of his control. His shoulders heaved uncontrollably in silent sobs, the intensity battling with the pain and winning. Of course he'd known. And wallowed in the guilt anyway, and become exactly what he most despised.

*

It was the need for air that finally forced him to get his ragged breathing under control. In all that time Reid was silent: having had his say he must now be appreciating the effects of it. But when Hotch sagged in exhaustion he said, a trace of tiredness in his own voice, "I'll take you down to the first floor when you're ready."

It was over, then. He felt drained and light-headed with the dizzying mix of adrenaline, pain, endorphins, and relief. He took another shaky breath before confirming, "I can holster my gun now?"

"As long as you keep the safety on."

He edged painfully to it, pausing halfway to collect his forgotten pocket knife too. Leftover adrenaline made every muscle tremble. As he fumbled the gun into its holster his phone beeped, and twice more. "Fuck," he said, remembering the messages he'd tried sending earlier.

"It's okay," Reid said, "I saved your outgoing messages to draft. These ones are Jessica saying she's happy to keep Jack tonight, and Rossi saying sure he'll give you a lift home, what's wrong, and he'll be here in— Uh, as of now, four minutes. I think he's speeding."

"Reid," Hotch said helplessly, "I appreciate that I probably shouldn't be on the road right now but couldn't you have just called a taxi?" He was a battered, tear-streaked, teeth-chattering mess. He could probably walk out of here without a limp, but even the thought of opening a car door or pulling on a seatbelt unaided made him quail. Dave was going to take one look at him and start with the third degree. "What the hell am I supposed to tell him?"

"Um, the elevator was out so you took the stairs and tripped?"

"More like threw myself over the railing and changed my mind halfway down." Fuck, that was definitely what Dave would think. "He'll throw me in the psych ward."

"There's always the truth," Reid pointed out.

Hotch spared the camera a sour look while his thoughts flew. If he did tell the truth, Dave would _probably_ follow his lead to keep it in-house. Or else put them both in the psych ward. A pair of agents beating each other up in their off-hours was one thing, potentially lethal sabotage of federal property was another. Dammit: "We can't leave the elevator like this."

"Yeah, I'll tell Facilities a screw's come loose before I go home."

"I mean the—" He stopped, feeling as if the floor had dropped out from under him again. Always the same three feet. Reid had said— No: he'd _implied_ he'd modified the braking mechanisms and worse was in store, but he'd never actually... He'd just manipulated Hotch into climbing up onto the handrail, turning three feet into seven again and again and— He shook his head at himself: that didn't matter now. "The emergency brakes just got more use than they have in the last year. They need to do a full maintenance check."

"Okay," Reid said equably.

Hotch resumed manoeuvring his briefcase upright, then pushed himself heavily to his feet. He'd no sooner reached them than the elevator shivered its prelude to descent. Reflexively he restrained a flinch, but as promised it took the slow way down the rest of the step to 19... 18....

Plenty of time to get his story straight, and resign himself to the fact that, no matter what he said, Dave was going to smother him with bandages — and attention. Which was Reid's plan. Because _Reid_ wasn't stupid enough to leave his victim with nothing to do but plot revenge — or, for all that talk of revenge, swine enough to cripple him and leave him without so much as an icepack.

The light flicked from 14, to 13. Hotch looked ahead at the closed doors and said, "I am sorry, you know."

Reid didn't answer. Maybe he really had gone away this time. Probably he was just waiting for Hotch to say something worth answering.

He took a breath. A rib ached, but he thought it wasn't broken. His teeth chattered, but if he could talk drunk he could talk now. "When Dad died, I was a complete screw-up. It wasn't what my mother told you, but it was bad, and I didn't want to go home to Jack drunk and angry, so... The truth is you were just the closest. I told myself I was going to sleep on your couch; maybe I even was. But then I saw your gun was in your pocket, and..." He trailed off.

"You _wanted_ me to shoot you?" Reid said indignantly.

"No, I—" His mouth was very, very dry. Which was what happened with adrenaline, and dithering wasn't going to make it any easier to get the words out. "I wanted to hurt someone, and I think I thought that if you _could_ defend yourself then somehow that made it... defensible. Obviously I was wrong. There is no defence. I assaulted you, physically and verbally, and in doing so I betrayed your trust, and... I'm sorry."

The lift reached the first floor and settled with a ding. He dared a sideways glance up at the camera, as if he could decipher Reid's reaction from it.

"Apology accepted," Reid said, and in case Hotch thought he'd imagined the smugness in his tone, added, "I'll see you at work on Monday."

_No!_ he wanted urgently to explain. _I_ chose _to apologise. You didn't manipulate me into it by... combining blunt physical and incisive verbal assaults... systematically breaking all my defences... inducing a form of traumatic bonding by re-establishing rapport... while finally removing the overt pressure to comply that I would have continued to resist. That's not— It's not—_

It was exactly what had happened. Reid had wanted revenge and a detailed apology, and he'd got them. And Hotch by any measure had got what he'd deserved and wasn't going to whine about it now — even if that was exactly what Reid was counting on. He looked down and, when the doors opened, reached for his briefcase. His swollen wrist screamed, but it wasn't far to the parking lot. With a careful nod in the general direction of the camera, he straightened his spine and stepped out of the elevator.

**Author's Note:**

> Crow: "There is no consistent distinction between "crows" and "ravens", and these appellations have been assigned to different species chiefly on the basis of their size, crows generally being smaller than ravens." ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven)) Also because crows are avian geniuses.
> 
> to crow: "to shout in exultation or defiance; to brag" ([Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crow#Verb))
> 
> to eat crow: "to display total humility, especially when shown to be wrong" ([The Free Dictionary](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/eat+crow))


End file.
